1636- the Flight of the Nightingale

by David Carrico

  Something was different. It took Johann a few moments to realize that Fräulein Anastasia’s hair was short. Very short. Extremely short. It looked as if someone had cut all her hair to less than finger length.

  Now it was understood that up-time women, among their many freedoms and licenses, were much more casual about the treatment of their hair than the women Johann had known all his life. And outside of Frau Marla, he hadn’t seen many of them who wore their hair long. But shorter than Marla’s hair left plenty of room for length—which Fräulein Anastasia’s hair no longer possessed.

  Johann considered the young woman. Perhaps she had been ill, and they had cut off her hair for some reason to help her heal. Doctors had been known to do stranger things, he knew.

  The other thought that attempted to cross his mind he pushed away. Surely if she had committed some sin that a pastor or congregation had levied this as a punishment she would not be here surrounded by her friends. Perish the thought.

  He let the conversations flow around him, content to sip his ale and look from under lowered lids at the young woman. Whatever the reason for the cutting of her hair, Johann had to admit it gave a certain charm to her.

  Marla raised her head and looked toward the bar. “Woops! Okay, folks, time to do our thing. Let’s go.” Instruments were pulled from cases and bags, and Marla and Friends trooped to the open spot at the end of the tavern.

  Johann found the evening enjoyable. He still wasn’t very familiar with the songs that Marla and the men that clustered around her liked to perform. They were for the most part bright and bouncy songs, many of which would have had people dancing to them had they been done at a town fair or village market. He remembered being told they were mostly from up-time Ireland, which he had some trouble crediting. Irishmen in the here and now weren’t exactly common in Wechmar and Erfurt where he grew up, but the few that he’d met here in Magdeburg did not seem to fit with bright and bouncy. A more moody, surly, snarling group of men he’d never met before, and never wished to again.

  Regardless of their origin, by now the songs were familiar to the crowd in the Green Horse, enough so that they were singing along with some of the choruses. Johann hummed instead, foot tapping and fingers wagging in the air.

  The music reached a resting place after the musician’s finished “Nell Flaherty’s Drake” with a flourish. Marla was panting from the rapid pace of the song with its intricate lyrics. “Staci!” she called out.

  Johann watched as Fräulein Matowski looked around. Marla beckoned her. She shook her head, and Marla beckoned more energetically. Fräulein Stevenson reached across the table and nudged her. “Go on. You know she won’t take no for an answer.”

  Fräulein Matowski shrugged, drained her coffee cup and stood. As she walked toward the musicians, Johann picked up his mug and slid down the bench to sit closer to Fräulein Stevenson. She looked over at him and smiled, then returned her gaze to her friends.

  Marla waved for quiet. “We’re going to do an old song from up-time America,” she said. “Leastways, it was old for us, before the Ring fell—close to two hundred years, anyway. Listen to ‘Oh Shenandoah.’”

  The musicians rearranged themselves, with Franz and Marla stepping forward and placing Fräulein Matowski in the middle. Franz lifted his bow and began playing a haunting melody. It soared and fell, flowed and ebbed, and at length paused for a moment of silence, delicately balanced, as if it stood on the head of a pin.

  Oh Shenandoah,

  I long to hear you,

  Away you rolling river,

  A woman’s voice began, and Franz played a descant. Johann was caught by surprise nonetheless, for it was not the voice he expected. It was Fräulein Matowski that he heard, singing in a strong alto.

  Oh Shenandoah,

  I long to hear you,

  Away, I’m bound away

  ’Cross the wide Missouri

  Marla’s friend was not a vocalist to be a peer with Marla; Johann pursed his lips. Still, he nodded. Very few singers would equal Marla, and one could be less than Marla and still be very good. Fräulein Matowski was good—maybe even very good. He relaxed and listened to the song.

  Oh Shenandoah,

  I love your daughter,

  Away you rolling river,

  When the second verse began, the other instruments joined Franz in providing a musical platform to lift Fräulein Matowski’s voice to a new level. Marla came in as well, singing now the descant that Franz had played in the first verse.

  I’ll take her ’cross

  Your rolling water,

  Away, I’m bound away

  ’Cross the wide Missouri.

  Johann closed his eyes to avert distractions and listened with concentration. This was not a bravura performance; this was not something that he would take to the courts of the emperor or the Hochadel. Still and all, it was beautiful, presented with no affectation by the musicians, and he drank it in.

  The remaining verses followed the pattern of the second.

  ’Tis seven years,

  I’ve been a rover,

  Away you rolling river,

  When I return,

  I’ll be your lover,

  Away, I’m bound away

  ’Cross the wide Missouri.

  Oh Shenandoah,

  I’m bound to leave you.

  Away you rolling river,

  Oh Shenandoah,

  I’ll not deceive you.

  Away, I’m bound away

  ’Cross the wide Missouri.

  Away, I’m bound away

  ’Cross the wide Missouri.

  After the last verse, Rudolf Tuchman’s flute carried the melody again as a solo line, rising and falling, falling and rising, to fade away on the final note. Johann—indeed, the whole audience—sat in silence for a long moment, until applause broke out from the back of the room.

  Johann leaned toward Fräulein Stevenson under the cover of the applause. “That was well done.”

  She nodded vigorously. “Marla and Staci did that as a duet for choir contest their senior year in high school.” She counted her fingers. “That was three years ago, I think. Hard to tell exactly with the Ring of Fire in the middle of it.” She flipped her hand in the air. “Anyway, they got the highest rank possible from the judges.” Her shoulders heaved in a sigh. “I wish I could sing half that good.”

  “Are you not a musician, then, Fräulein Stevenson?”

  “Call me Casey. Fräulein makes me feel like an old maid aunt. And no, I’m not a musician. I mean, my mother taught me some piano, but the real talent skipped me and went to my brother, I think. I’m just a school teacher.” She paused for a moment. “Although I think I’m pretty good at that.”

  “And is Fräulein Matowski a musician or a school teacher?” Johann was intrigued.

  “Neither one.” Casey gave a wicked grin. “She’s a dancer, she is, and everything else is just what she has to do to be able to dance.”

  “Dancer?” Johann wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  “Sure. Didn’t you see the performance of A Falcon Falls back in July? I think you were in town then, maybe.”

  Johann thought back, then shook his head. “No, just some glimpses of it. Some kind of big staged thing with many set dances, is what I gathered. Was it an opera?”

  “No, it was a ballet of sorts, a production consisting solely of dances. Staci danced one of the lead roles in it. Staci’s mother Bitty produced it. She’s taught dance in Grantville since forever. Everybody who’s studied dance started with her, including me.”

  Johann’s eyes drifted back to Fräulein Matowski—Staci. She was smiling and singing along, clapping her hands as the musicians played another fast song. “She looks so young.”

  Casey followed his glance. “Yeah, I know what you mean. She looks like she’s a pixie, about twelve or thirteen years old, especially since she got her hair cut. She’s younger than I am, but she’s actually older than Marla, by at least a couple of months.�
� She counted her fingers again. “Yep. She’s twenty-three now.”

  Johann watched as the song dissolved into laughter. His gaze narrowed until his vision was filled only with the shining face of the smallest performer. His mouth curved in a small smile.

  * * *

  The evening came to a close, and Marla’s friends packed up their instruments, laughing and talking loudly to each other. Johann watched with a smile. They reminded him so much of his younger brothers: full of enthusiasm and energy, one moment boasting of how well they performed, and in the next pointing to a friend and claiming that he was the root of all musical evil because he bobbled a note. Of course, the friend responded in like kind, and laughter arose from around them.

  Johann’s eyes never strayed far from Fräulein Staci. She pulled on a faded blue jacket while she chattered to Marla and Casey, then picked up a cap of the style the up-timers called baseball and placed it on her head. It was black, with a large orange P symbol on the front of it. It occurred to him that she looked even more like a boy than before. She caught him looking at her, and grinned at him.

  He pointed to the cap. She looked puzzled and pulled it off.

  “What does the letter stand for?” he asked, stepping closer.

  “Pittsburgh.” Staci put the cap back on and tugged it into place.

  “Pittsburgh.” He rolled the word around in his mind, and made the obvious translation. “Fort Pitt?”

  “Yep. That’s what the first structure was for a city in the up-time state of Pennsylvania. Became a very large city, about a hundred miles north of where Grantville was before the Ring fell. This,” Staci touched a finger to the bill of the cap, “is from the city’s baseball team, called the Pirates.” She started closing snaps on the front of the jacket. Casey stepped up beside her and they started toward the door.

  Johann fell in on the other side of her. “Did someone in your family play for this baseball team?” He’d been to Grantville. He congratulated himself on knowing what baseball was.

  Both the young women broke out in laughter. “No, no,” Staci gasped after a few moments. Johann held the door open and followed them out into the night air. “Not that my dad didn’t try to get my brothers interested in the idea. No, Dad is a big fan of the Pirates.” She tilted her head and looked over at Johann. “Actually, I guess was a big fan is the way to say it. About the biggest in Grantville, and that’s saying something. And he and all his baseball buddies went into mourning when the shock of the Ring of Fire wore off and they realized they’d never see another Pirates game. No more games on TV, no more weekend trips up to Pittsburgh to see them play. It was downright gloomy around the house for a long time. They picked up on the local games when those started, but it wasn’t the same. That was one of the reasons why I took the teacher’s job here in Magdeburg.”

  “One of them,” Casey snickered.

  Staci shoved her friend’s shoulder, causing her to stagger a step or two. “You should talk. You were the one egging me on. You just wanted a roommate so you could be closer to Carl Schockley.”

  “So you teach?” Johann prompted.

  “Yeah, that’s my day job.”

  “Day job?”

  “It’s what I do to feed myself and pay my expenses. It’s not who I am, though. I don’t want to be known at the end of my life as a teacher. Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” she hurried to say. “It’s just that I’d rather have something on my tombstone besides ‘She taught grammar to five thousand four hundred and ninety-seven snot-nosed little girls.’”

  Casey laughed again.

  “I’m serious,” Staci maintained. She looked around as they wandered down the street. Johann knew more or less where they were, but wasn’t sure where they were going. He was content to let them guide his steps.

  Staci shivered. “I still have trouble getting used to how crowded the houses are here in Magdeburg.”

  Crowded? Johann looked around. Everything looked normal to him.

  “I mean,” she continued, “they’re all built right next to each other, walls touching. There’s no yards, there’s no space. You’ve been to Grantville,” Staci appealed to Johann, “you know what I mean. Even in the downtown district there’s room. Here, except for the new boulevards, most of the streets are so narrow I can stand in the middle and almost touch the buildings on both sides.”

  Johann tried to see through the eyes of an up-timer, and began to understand what she was talking about. He remembered all the open spaces in the town, all the wide avenues and large lawns and gardens. He also remembered thinking that the up-time must have been very rich for everyone to live on private estates. Now he looked around with that vision, and understood why Staci shivered. The only wide-open spaces in Magdeburg were the space around the Dom, and Hans Richter Square and the Gustavstrasse that led into it. Well, and the places where buildings that had burned in Tilly’s sack of the city had not been rebuilt yet, but he supposed those didn’t count.

  “It is the way it is done here and now,” he said with a shrug. “Perhaps in time it will change, but not soon.”

  Staci shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and kicked a stone down the street. “Oh, I can deal with it. It just makes me feel claustrophobic sometimes, is all.” She raised her head up and the moonlight lit her smile. “Of course, having everything built close together like this does mean that no place in town is very far away from anyplace else. It’s easy to walk.”

  And so the three of them continued walking. “Where are we going?” Johann finally asked.

  “Home,” the young women both said at the same time, which occasioned another spurt of laughter. “Not too far,” Casey added.

  Staci nodded. She looked up at Johann again. “So, Johann, have you figured out yet how you’re related to Johann Sebastian?”

  He shook his head. “No, the report from Grantville hasn’t arrived yet. But soon, soon I will know.”

  “What’s so important about him, anyway?”

  Johann stopped still, astounded. The two young women went a step or two further, then turned and faced him.

  Casey laughed, he presumed at the expression on his face. “You’ll have to forgive her, Johann. She’s a dancer. To her, real music begins with the Romantic-era composers, a hundred years after Master Bach.”

  Staci slugged her friend in the shoulder again. “I’m not that bad! And you’re a dancer, too.”

  “Are too!” Casey slugged her back. She looked over at Johann. “I already told you I’m not much of a musician, but I know this much. Do you want to tell her, or do you want me to?”

  Johann shook his head. “How can I say this to make you see?” It amazed him that someone with Staci’s talent for music didn’t immediately grasp this understanding. A thought occurred to him. “Let me state it like thus: if music were a religion, Johann Sebastian Bach would be its Moses—no, Saints Peter and Paul combined.”

  In an age where what religion a man professed might determine whether he was breathing by the end of the day, that was a strong statement. He could see that Staci was impressed.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll have to take your word for it. Casey’s right. If I can’t dance to it or sing it, I don’t pay much attention to music. But that…if that’s how important that old man is to you, then go for it. Build your organ and play his music.”

  “I intend to,” Johann said, pleased at her encouragement. “It may well become my life’s work.”

  They wandered on in silence for a space, until the ladies stopped in front of an ornate door. Johann looked at the imposing building, then back at them. He tilted his head to one side, and they laughed.

  “I’d call it our rooming house,” Staci offered, “but it’s actually the school, and we have an apartment in it. Thanks for seeing us home.”

  Johann gave a slight bow. “It was my pleasure, Fräuleins. Good night to you, and until another time.” He dipped his head again, then watched as they stepped up to the doorway and entered the h
ouse.

  * * *

  Casey closed the door to their room and whirled on Staci. “You, girlfriend, have got an admirer.”

  “Do I?” Staci took her cap off and tossed it on the wash stand. She started unsnapping her denim jacket.

  Casey threw her hands in the air. “Staci, the man spent the entire evening watching you. Almost everything he said while you were performing were questions about you. I could barely get him to look at me.”

  “What of it?”

  “What of it?” Casey snapped. “What of it? He’s literate, he’s educated, he knows the arts well enough that he has a chance of understanding you, and he doesn’t come across as a down-time Lothario looking to conquer an up-time maiden. You might consider giving him a bit of encouragement.”

  “Mmm.” Staci hung her jacket on a peg in the wall, then turned back to her roommate. “First of all, you’re not supposed to be flirting with other men. You’re pretty locked in to Carl, as I recall. And second of all…look, I admit the man is presentable, if not exactly handsome, and I’m flattered that he’s asking about me. But he’s years older than I am, and he’s a down-timer.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’m not sure he’s flexible enough to accept me for what I am. I’m a dancer, I’m always going to be a dancer, and any man who comes into my life has to accept that. No, he has to do more than accept that—he has to support that.”

  Staci crossed her arms and looked at her roommate. “I’ll give Bach points for not being a down-time version of a jock. He’s polite and well-mannered. And he appears to be everything you say he is. I’ll even give him points for being passionate about his art. If anyone can understand that, I can. The question is, will he allow me to be equally passionate about my art?”

  Casey saw the expression on Staci’s face shift through fleeting impressions of loneliness and fear before settling into one of resolution.